Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots podcast for December 31, 2005

Has it really been a year of my blogging and podcasting?

An end of the year podcast discussing blogging, podcasting, citizen media, the flight of ad dollars from traditional media to internet-centric offerings, and being on the threshold of a new year filled with possibility.

Download or listen to this end of the year podcast

Happy Holidays...

The Polar Express is leaving the station tonight...are you climbing aboard?

(Update 12/27/05: Several people asked me, "So what's up with THAT post?"  so I thought I'd explain.  If you've seen the movie, there is the main character -- a little boy who doesn't believe in Santa Claus -- and another seen above who are reluctant to get on the train. The metaphor is: Do you have the faith in yourself -- and that which you can not yet know -- to climb aboard the train?).

Another milestone...

Today is another birthday and so I went back and re-read last year's birthday post (and also found this old picture with my Mom, Dad and older sister).  I was actually surprised that last year's post was so relevant to where I am today so -- instead of rewriting the same thing and because I liked last year's so well -- here it is again:

Today is another milestone on my path in life (my birthday) and I always grow contemplative and melancholy on this day each year. When I was a kid it was all about having my birthday being 'lost' due to the impending Christmas holiday ("hey Steve, you'll get your 'combo' bday/xmas present on Christmas!") and I was more sad than anything else. As I moved in to adulthood, this day was all about thinking through the meaning of the year of my life just passed, what I accomplished, and whether or not I made a difference in the world.

Has mine been a wonderful life?  I often wonder. Today, more than any other, is the time these thoughts swirl around in my head faster than any other day throughout the year. Though some think it's sappy and is an overused metaphor for contemplating one's impact on the world, I still watch It's A Wonderful Life almost every year...and it has the same heart-tugging, introspective effect on me every time.

Most people have reflective thoughts like these on New Year's Eve. Me?  That evening feels like I'm on the precipice about to leap in to the future -- and I always find myself enthusiastic, optimistic and eager for the new year to begin. I consider a new year to be all about renewal, possibilities and being my opportunity to re-engineer myself and focus on making a difference and being a "bright light" once again.

On the next page is content from an email I received from a buddy of mine last night. It is of the type that I almost *always* immediately delete -- but I didn't this time and it sparked thoughts about my "generational place" in the world and the continuing process of renewal.

Connecting the Dots podcast for December 21, 2005

a) Discussing the revelation of how President Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy domestically inside of the United States *and* what is possible with the rumored supersecret Echelon and its technology;

b) Fantastico as an add-on to CPanel at hosting companies;

c) Needs that remain unfulfilled with using open source software 'cause it's just too hard to make it all work together;

d) Web 2.0 and the dirty little secret post #1 and #2; and some other miscellaneous ramblings.

Download or listen to this week's podcast

Microsoft creating FUD with Google Advertisers

Joi Ito today pointed to an eWeek article by Ryan Naraine entitled, "MS Research: Typo-Squatters Are Gaming Google." Gee...what possible incentive would Microsoft have for uncovering such a travesty?

In the words of an old mentor of mine, "Borsch...discover someone's incentives and you'll understand the why behind any move." To me Microsoft's incentives are obvious: scare the beejesus out of Google's advertisers to slow down their advertising cash-cow as one step in a campaign to enter Google's space.

This is such a laughingly blatant Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) play on the part of Microsoft that a more overt interpretation needs to be articulated by Mr. Naraine vs. this opening sentence: "Researchers at Microsoft Corp. have blown the lid off a large-scale, typo-squatting scheme that uses multi-layer URL redirection to game Google's AdSense for domains program." Or maybe it's just me not realizing that most readers would probably immediately understand the hidden agenda behind this move?

Naraine's column needs to scream, "OPINION" at the top. I've come to expect much, much more from eWeek.

Global Consciousness, Religion & Blogging

Probably the time of year with the holidays and all...but I had not one, not two, but three conversations today about the world's religions, global consciousness, and how the internet is rapidly accelerating the propagation of that consciousness. It made me stop and think, examine my memories, and realize why I'm thinking about the holiday season this year on a much more global scale.

There is currently a fair amount of agitation and debate about so-called "politically correct" celebrations in America this season (vs. just Christmas). In my opinion, this angst is a direct result of increasing global consciousness and the growing awareness of other ways to practice faith (and that much of the world practices something other than Christianity). Part of it could be the war in Iraq and the various religious factions at odds there of which we're learning. Part could be caused by an increasing assertion by people that are non-Christian to celebrate their point of view.

What I am coming to believe, however, is that the blogosphere is a platform for voices to be heard in ways previously not available and are an amazing counterpoint to media that tends to sway people to one common point of view. Questions are public. Counterpoints are public. Opinions are public. They're searchable and ranked in Technorati and Google Blog Search.

The photos above bring back a lot of memories for me and are illustrative of how my worldview and consciousness around Christmas was shaped. The one where I'm a cowboy was special since I loved that outfit. The other -- with my sister and I in front of a painted window -- is special since my Mom (who is now deceased) painted those by hand for many, many years on our front picture window. For me as a kid, the season was all about Christmas trees, Santa, presents, painted windows, cookies, Grandpa's, Grandma's, Auntie's, Uncle's and cousins, snow (and, oh yeah, that Messiah that was born in Bethlehem!).

What the photos don't show is that my narrow worldview and consciousness was extraordinarily limited as were all of my family members. We watched the three broadcast network Christmas specials, went to movies about Christmas, read about Christmas in books and magazines, and had a Christmas pageant and celebrations every year in school.

I grew up Catholic and in suburbia with virtually no one of color or even of non-Christian religious persuasion (though I remember the one Jewish boy in my school who had a real hard time with the Christmas season when we were in 3rd grade). Mostly I couldn't have cared less about anyone else's reality and we certainly didn't talk about any other religions at our dinner table. Consequently I spent the first 25 or so years of my life with a pretty myopic point of view and narrow consciousness when it came to religion or any other point of view.

The longer I am alive -- and the more knowledge of other perspectives and reality I gain -- the higher my consciousness becomes. I am increasingly aware of the vast number of people on this earth that practice a religion other than Christianity. Awareness that this season isn't about presents, snow and in fact doesn't even need to be a White Christmas. Having just been in Arizona (where the Christmas decorations are everywhere) I had to remind my son that it was OK to not need snow to celebrate Christmas...since Jesus was born in a desert.

The more I blog, connect with people all over the world, and continue to expand my consciousness about other people's reality, the more accepting I am of other ways to interpret the spiritual parts of ourselves and of our world. As other people globally raise their own consciousness and grow (if allowed to do so) in their understanding of others, it can only help move us all forward.

Cliff Dwellings and Technology

My son and I are in Arizona for what's turned out to be our 6th Dad & Son Adventure. Today we were traveling along the Apache Trail, an indigenous pathway used for hundreds of years -- and relevant to us today was the use by the Salado indians and then later the Apache.

The thing that struck me while we were on this adventure today was the marked contrast between life about 150-700 years ago with the Apache and the Salado before them, and life today as we drove along in our nice rental car with me thinking about Web 2.0 from time-to-time (don't ask how *that* connection was made!).

We stopped at cliff dwellings occupied by the Salado of Tonto Basin around 1250 AD (click on the four-picture to see my photos). No one knows why (and like the Anasazi and other native peoples of the desert Southwest) the Salado vanished and abandoned these cliff dwellings. When you're actually standing in this dwelling and it hits you how difficult it must've been to survive and eke out a living, it's no wonder that the Salado vanished.

Conjecture amongst scientists as to why they left run the gamut from using up sparse resources (like the Mesquite tree) to a shift in the climate to warfare. But it's all conjecture. What makes me think and draw parallels to today is global warming and the shifts it's causing; to our use (and overuse) of resources like the precious water that is being consumed at frighteningly fast rates in the southwest; and the fragility and precariousness of our existence.

Will technology continue to pull rabbits out of a hat and stay ahead of resource consumption by humans, increased demand for energy, drug resistant strains of microbes, and the scalability of Typepad? (Sorry...just had to throw that in since the outage affected me on this adventure). Or will some of us vanish?

Arizona is projected to grow from 5.1 million people in 2000 to 10.7 million by 2030, bringing it from the 20th most populous state to the 10th. With Lake Mead dropping and signs pointing to a drought in Arizona, can the state handle this growth or will the infrastructure collapse? Read more in one of my earlier posts "Could Water be the Oil of the 21st Century?" if you care to learn more about one depleting resource...water.

Why didn't Typepad blog during the outage?

UPDATE: Interview with Typepad's Anil Dash here

As I've said several times in the past on my blog, scalability with Web 2.0 applications matters. The last couple of days of Typepad system failure has made me question whether or not I can continue blogging with this service. At least using Movable Type or Wordpress on my own hosted site (with hoster Blue Host) would allow me to completely backup my posts vs. relying upon the blogging host, in this case Typepad.

The effort, energy and investment of enthusiasm in nearly every post makes the continuation of my posts something I care about! When they announced the failure on December 16th, they "rolled back" to their last backup....several days earlier. Did this mean they don't perform daily backups? If so, they've violated "Information Technology 101" rules. As of this writing, images are missing from the last few days of posts.

For many months I've been experiencing ongoing slowness and performance issues with the Typepad service. Ironically, I'd emailed SixApart (Typepad's parent company) CEO, Barak Berkowitz, November 24th from a hotel on my Thanksgiving holiday articulating my experience with this unacceptable performance. He stated in part,

While I understand that you feel that this has to be a TypePad problem I believe it is not.  We constantly measure actual performance from all over the world and as well as at the datacenter on our servers and network devices.  For the last 10 days performance has been very good and it is excellent today.  I was actually checking performance around the time you sent this and it was first rate.

Now I understand that when we have let you down a number of times and even pointed out our flaws it becomes easy to assume it is us again, it is only natural that it will take some time for us to earn your trust back.   But I believe that we will.  Please realize that there are very many things that could cause an experience like yours including temporary access problems like you describe, particularly through a hotel network which use complex gateways.

Besides feeling a bit chastised by Mr. Berkowitz, it's clear to me now that either the measurement of Typepad performance was flawed or that my experience was a precursor to Typepad's future failure which has occurred. I also submit that I'm a bit taken aback since I've been at an executive level at two enterprise software companies, have used a myriad of enterprise-class web applications, and know when it's my issue or a network issue. It's now very apparent that it's not my issue. I would hope in the future Typepad listens more intently to their customers.

Oh yeah...I tried emailing Mr. Berkowitz again this evening but, "The following addresses had permanent fatal errors --<Barakb@sixapart.com>". Guess their email servers are down too.

Domestic Surveillance

First I read this article in November in several newspapers about how the White House may expand the power of a Pentagon agency: "The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel, and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world."

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 expressly prohibited military intervention and supplation of domestic policing forces (or did it?).

Then MSNBC comes out yesterday with proof that there is military intelligence gathering being performed by the Pentagon. "A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period."

What the heck is going on? What is the White House up to now? I've considered myself a staunch patriot my entire life. Though leaning politically left from time-to-time (yet am mostly right of center), I've become increasingly agitated by the decimation of our civil liberties, the cowtowing to oil and media companies, the obvious issues with the justification for the war in Iraq, and the systemic setup of command-and-control measures like the one mentioned above.

Don't just chalk this up to the government protecting us against the boogeyman Al Qaeda and go about your daily business. If you care at all about the future of the United States and the domestic climate your children will inherit, be mindful and speak out.

Update: Pentagon says "oops" and expunges database. Reuters article here.

Death of Distance

Are we getting closer to the death of distance? Or are the technical challenges for truly meaningful human communication still too difficult?

In her book, The Death of Distance, Frances Cairncross makes a cogent argument that distance is becoming irrelevant as the communications revolution unfolds (and as bandwidth and connectivity accelerates over the internet). Written in 2001 and updated last year, it's an excellent read -- if you at all enjoyed Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat -- since it is communications technologies (and the reduction in cost of their use) that is accelerating the flattening of the earth and our ability to communicate with others regardless of where they are physically.

But how close are we in connecting us in ways that are human?

Connecting the Dots podcast for December 11, 2005

Quick discussion of choosing our path in life as well as organizing the tsunami of data and content that threatens to drown us all. The tool Devonthink is discussed.

Download or listen to this week's podcast

Choosing the path...

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."  Sir Winston Churchill

It has come time for me to ascend to the next level of my journey and re-discover the joy and glory of the climb along my path once again. Yesterday I intentionally stepped off one path and gently closed the gate behind me on my way out. Today is the start of the next phase of my life adventure, and I'm eager and excited for it to unfold and the next path upon which to walk become clear.

The pictures you see in this post are ones I've taken just this year and they're an apt metaphor for where I'm at right now: multiple paths, all different, all beautiful and each seductively appealing in their own way. As an amateur photographer, I enjoy capturing things that appeal to me. Photos like these, in whose essence I see my sense of adventure and delight, are ones that also highlight and showcase my joy in serendipitous discovery. Many of my other photographs are of doors not yet open, windows that are closed for now, and paths where the end can't yet be seen nor give the viewer any sense of what is around the corner or over the hill.

Questions abound from former colleagues, friends and family. "What are you going to do?" Everyone wants specifics which I'm not yet prepared to give. There are multiple paths from which I can choose but I'm going to do something atypical and unprecedented for me: be open to adventure, surprise and delight and take joy in the serendipitous discovery that will come. In the words of a buddy of mine, "So Borsch...you're gonna take a few weeks off?" Yeah...but that seems to trivialize what my intention is this time around. I intend to be completely open to possibility like never before and choose differently.

This story in five chapters is illustrative of where I've been with past choices and what I intend to do now:

Chapter 1: I walk down a path. There is a huge, deep hole in the middle of it and I fall in. It takes me a *very* long time to climb out.

Chapter 2: I walk down that same path. A bit preoccupied yet still knowing the hole is there, I fall in again! Though not as long as the first time, it still takes me awhile to climb out.

Chapter 3: I walk down the same path. I see the hole; I know it's there; I fall in anyway. I climb right out.

Chapter 4: I again walk down the same path. I see the hole, I know it's there; I walk around it.

Chapter 5: I walk down a different path.

How often do we do the same thing over-and-over again expecting a different result? I know you've heard that as many times as I have (and it's one of "those fundamental truths"), but we each have to learn it ourselves, overcome whatever fears are holding us back, and walk down our own different path. A path that aligns with our talents, skills, passions and interests.

Stay tuned...

One year anniversary of Connecting the Dots

Today is the one year anniversary of my first blog post in 2004 (and nearly 7 months of podcasting). Thought this week was time too for a re-design...and what you see now (mainly a new header, new podcasting page, new about page) is an attempt to freshen it up.

My purpose with diving in to the blogosphere, becoming a podcaster and totally and completely immersing myself in this next phase of the Web (of which the acceleration and momentum is becoming palpable) was to figure it out, be in-the-game and gain an intuitive understanding of what's happening as the collective consciousness of humankind gets connected. The only way to understand a paradigm shift is to live it and what's happening right now is the most fundamental shift in communications I'll see in my lifetime.

As a way to explain why I started blogging and podcasting, this snippet (which is my favorite and I have it framed and in my office as a constant reminder) is from our former president, Teddy Roosevelt, who said this in a speech to the Sorbonne in France in 1910:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I've tried to be in the arena with Connecting the Dots instead of observing in the stands as this communications shift unfolds...mostly being in awe and appreciative of the others in this space striving valiantly, erring, coming up short again and again, but most often putting forth their best. Sometimes I've been embarrassed when friends and colleagues say, "You're doing a what? What's a blog? What's a podcast?", often been criticized, but mostly enjoying the weekly growth in readership and personal connections which have come about as a result. It's been very worthwhile. Thanks to all of you who read this blog...I appreciate it.

Google & Yahoo new services...

Two new services hit my radar screen this morning: Google Transit and Yahoo Answers. The innovation with these new services is quite nice though I had puzzled reactions to both.

Google Transit is, as they say in their FAQ, "Do you live in or near a city? Want to go someplace—to the airport, to dinner, to work every day—and not worry about the hassles and expense of driving and parking? Google Transit Trip Planner enables you to enter the specifics of your trip—where you're starting, where you're ending up, what time of day you'd like to leave and/or arrive—then uses all available public transportation schedules and information to plot out the most efficient possible step-by-step itinerary. You can even compare the cost of your trip with the cost of driving the same route!

At the moment we're only offering this service for the Portland, Oregon metro area, but we plan to expand to cities throughout the United States and around the world."

My take? Scheduling is a fine service but I'd rather sign up for a route to work and have Google email me (I have a Blackberry) or SMS me if there was a traffic delay...and suggest another route. THAT would be useful 'cause I can figure out the public transportation easily by myself. Yes, they've got some useful features (and Transit could be helpful if a person was traveling to another city and wanted to use public transportation) but seems like a nebulous value proposition to me.

"Yahoo! Answers is a place where people ask each other questions on any topic, and get answers by sharing facts, opinions, and personal experiences." Yahoo! Answers bugged me for two reasons:

1) I had to sign in using my Yahoo account before posting a question. This makes sense since it minimizes goofballs from asking inane questions...but the purpose of Answers is to get answers...not spend a bunch of time asking questions (or answering them for others) and hope that someone, at some point responds to the question you asked.

2) Yahoo! Answers kind of reminds me of the issues with adoption of open source software in the enterprise before support organizations began cropping up a couple of years ago. CIO asks the VP of I.T. what he/she is doing about the mission-critical system that crashed and how they're fixing it. "I've sent an email to the community," responds the VP. "You're fired," says the CIO.  Waiting around isn't an option and I don't think Yahoo! Answers will get traction. What are profound or valuable questions? Will the "community" even care to provide answers?

Yeah I know...both of these services are "in beta" and I do enjoy companies tossing stuff like this out in to the world for us to critique, hammer on and make better through feature recommendation. So maybe my $.02 will help since these both feel like alpha releases (not a technology alpha...but a feature alpha that's barely baked).

Web 2.0 Infrastructure: No longer a "dirty little secret"

One primary cause of the dotcom crash was caused by a tsunami of content and offerings that -- at the time -- were being consumed by thirsty consumers who were sipping it through a straw (i.e., a modem) and couldn't possibly access all that good stuff. Forgetting the infrastructure lessons of the crash (or just not talking about them) is the dirty little secret of Web 2.0.

My last day at Web 2.0 in San Francisco, I wrote a post called, "Web 2.0 Conference: The Dirty Little Secret" about the surprising lack of discussion about the scaling that would be demanded of startups offering web hosted applications. This scaling is not just more servers and data center bandwidth...but scaling that includes dealing with latency over the internet.

Just read both Jeremy Wright and Om Malik's posts about this exact issue.

Wright says, "Maybe I’m just spoiled, having worked in high performance, high availability apps before, but it constantly astounds me what some folk consider “scaleable” and “available” applications." Having just lived through the Typepad scalability hiccup (and I must admit being very impressed by how they handled it), this is just one example of a high profile "Web 2.0" company that just experienced the lack of infrastructure and its negative effect on their users.

Malik says, "However, the lack of planning for scale is a clear sign that we are living in a “built to flip” age. No one, is thinking (or planning) about long term business models!"

It's not just servers and bandwidth that are required for scale. It's dealing with latency over an increasingly fragmented and geographically disbursed base of people consuming web applications. As I mentioned in the post linked to above, "This (latency) is a technical problem. Imagine you have a portal that is "consuming" web services from a bunch of different sites. You've undoubtedly experienced ONE web service in the past (DoubleClick ads) where the web page "hung" (didn't parse) waiting for the DoubleClick service to deliver the ad. Now imagine that your blog or web page is grabbing photos, catalog items, maybe audio or video, blogrolls, calendars ALL from different web services, and you end up with one incredibly horrible user experience!"

There's a reason, for example, why Akamai exists and why they offer *both* tagged media files *and* transaction/session management: it's all geared toward a balanced, relatively equal experience for users wherever they reside on the planet.

I use Typepad, Newsgator, Gmail, Audioblog, and a plethora of other hosted offerings. I must admit spending a lot of time waiting for the data to travel the client-to-server-to-client round trip.

Marc Canter and JD Lasica hosted a panel discussion about Open Infrastructure at Web 2.0. While mostly focused on open formats, personal ownership of attention and other metadata (and ownership of data you can move from service to service at will), little time was spent on bandwidth and internet infrastructure (disclaimer: I've been involved peripherally advising JD on proposals surrounding open infrastructure and leveraging current for-profit company offerings).

I fear that the server in the basement to start and we'll add racks 'o servers later mentality will guarantee that the user experience with Web 2.0 applications will start off enjoyable and quickly turn in to a negative experience...and potentially kill the acceleration of this next phase of the Web.

Connecting the Dots podcast for December 5, 2005

Gadgets are discussed but mainly meditation, science and Steve's pending next step. This photo (one of my favorites that I call "Morning Storm Approaching") is a metaphor for where my head is at right now: a beautiful sunrise means a new day is dawning; clouds are rolling in meaning the day may be turbulent; but above all it is peaceful and serene -- and I find storms are amazing and beautiful too.

Listen to or download this week's podcast

Meditation and Western science

My bride convinced me about a year ago to try meditation. Initially resisting it, I finally gave in and started. It took me about 7-10 days of continuous trying to finally begin to understand and achieve the benefits from this practice. It felt so good and I was able to get in to such a calm state, that I didn't want to drag myself out of it. (Though like anything else in life, I struggle with shutting out the daily noise of life and carve out the time to meditate daily).

Being very interested in the practice of meditation while being rooted in science -- and that it just so happens I'm currently reading a new book by the Dalai Lama entitled, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality -- I instantly noticed when my news aggregator scraped this Wired article about "Dalai Lama Gets Meditation Lesson" and I immediately pounced on it:

Scientists present at this month's meeting included Richard Davidson, a Harvard University-trained neuroscientist who has done pioneering research on Buddhist monks, and Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University professor who studies the effects of stress on the body. They told the Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and an audience of 2,500 about recent experiments showing meditation can strengthen the immune system, prevent relapse in people with depression and lower cortisol levels. Cortisol is a hormone associated with stress.

All this is pushing the envelope of contemporary neuroscience. "It came as a great surprise to (scientists) that there were such clear neural correlates of meditative states," said Wolf Singer, the director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, who also addressed the conference.

There are an increasing number of articles -- including this fabulous one at Wikipedia -- that discuss real, demonstrable and quantifiable benefits from meditation that Westerners can believe in if scientists do. Look at this article, and then read this Psychology Today article that says at the end, "Through the deeply meditative practice of Tum-mo yoga, Tibetan monks are able to dry wet sheets placed on their bodies in near-freezing temperatures by raising their skin temperatures 17 degrees."

So it's not just stress reduction that could or should be a goal of achieving higher states of consciousness from the practice of meditation. It makes me wonder what other meditation benefits we'll discover as researchers probe our optimal mind/body states and the practices, medications and hacks we learn about and perform provide us with more knowledge.